wmbu radio
who runs this place?
my name is ash! i'm a college student from virginia, and i'm the host of asahidenpa as well as the webmaster of this neocities page. i do not have a personal homepage for myself yet, so for now you can consider this such.
what is your stream schedule?
asahidenpa airs every saturday at 8pm edt, and as of september we now take breaks on the third saturday of every month. i used to not have a schedule, but i decided to create one both for listeners' and my own sake. if you'd like to be notified when i go live, please subscribe to my rss feed!
what kind of music do you play?
there is no set genre for asahidenpa music—i play whatever i want. often songs i like, songs i've been listening to a lot recently, and new songs i've discovered recently. the genres differ greatly, and they may range from indie rock to vocaloid, folk punk to soft pop, hardcore metal to bizarre experimental. you might even get all of those in one stream if i'm feeling up to it! and, because i play what i like, the popularity of the songs can range from obscure tracks from the deepest recesses of the internet, to well-known tracks everyone and their mom has listened to many times—and everything else between those, too. keep in mind some of the tracks i play may be explicit, so i wouldn't consider asahidenpa to be a family-friendly station.
do you take song requests?
due to small listenership which consists mostly of my real-life friends, i can play a few impromptu requests during my show if i know who you are. but please, go easy on them!
that being said: if you have any songs or bands you'd like to share with me, or suggestions on what you'd like to hear in future streams, please feel free to send me an email! even if you're a stranger! i love discovering new music, and you can contact me at ashk@420blaze.it! (yes that's a real email)
what inspired you to create asahidenpa?
listening to the radio helps me discover new music. i enjoy radio stations such as staunton's independent station wqsv, and university of virginia's student-run station wxtj (among others), which play freeform content. after listening to people dj'ing their own shows on those stations, i decided that i also wanted to share the music i love with everyone! however, my uni did not have its own radio station, so i had to take matters into my own hands. thus, asahidenpa was born!
what makes people who stream with vlc so sexy and cool and amazing?
streaming through the direct link is, well, the most direct way of streaming asahidenpa. opening the link in a network stream using vlc ensures that there is as little latency as possible on your end, as the stream on the webpage may not autoplay at times and loads with the webpage itself which can lead to delay. now, you can download the m3u stream for your media player of choice!
what happens if the stream doesn't autoplay and i click play without refreshing?
you will get a very delayed stream because for some reason it loads it from the point it was at when you opened the webpage. please click the play button as soon as the webpage loads if you do not have autoplay.
what music plays when you are offline?
to provide more distinction between what plays when i'm online versus when i'm offline, i've decided to make the auto-dj play royalty-free lofi beats from fesliyan studios. i might eventually overhaul the auto-dj entirely, but i don't know yet. before that, it was mostly vocaloid because i wanted to test the auto-dj out and those were the mp3s i had on hand.
what does "asahidenpa" mean?
"asahi" (朝日) literally means "morning sun" in japanese, and it's a nickname i've used due to its similarity to my real name and because i like its meaning. "denpa" (電波) means "radio waves". put the two together, and you get a name i quickly thought of on the spot when zeno tools asked me to give the station a name.
and the website url?
there is no official meaning, and it is not affiliated with any similar existing acronyms. it was supposed to be a fictitious callsign, which i thought at the time, but it turns out some random syndicator fm station had that callsign and i didn't know about it. but this is a webcast so i don't really care, so i'll give it some retroactive meaning:
- we might be uncool
- wumbo ... u.
- we make broadcasting unique/[insert other u word]
- fill in the rest of the blanks
what is yesterweb?
yesterweb is a website devoted to preserving the ethos and environment of the old web (web 1.0). it is specifically against the sterile corporate environment that the internet has turned into (aka web 2.0), and encourages people to take control and make an internet of their own through personal web pages. asahidenpa is part of the webring, and yesterweb also has its own live radio that you should check out :]
what tools do you use to run your station?
this website is powered by neocities, a site which empowers any user to create a static website for free using html/css. it is based on the classic geocities from the 90s, which had the same concept. then for the embedded audio stream, i use zeno tools, which allows users to start and manage their own online radio stations for free. when i go live, i use the free open source software mixxx to record and stream to zeno's servers through icecast protocol. i play my music from spotify. i don't have any physical dj equipment, so the whole setup's kinda hacky lol.